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01 Jun The GOP War on Private Weapons In America by Bill Buppert

Publisher’s Note: I am a resigned life member of the NRA. I am a non-voter. I think the Constitution is a diabolically clever instrument to make a slave people think they are free. I am in favor to the total decriminalization and deregulation of all weapons systems across the Fetid Plain. There is not a weapons law on the books at any level of government in America I support. The only disarmament program I can get behind is all statist badged armed employees should be totally ungunned of all lethal and non-lethal systems until all government police forces are disbanded nation-wide. Things would be sporty, for about an hour.

I have confined this analysis to Republican mischief at the Federal level and not the dishonorable disarmament efforts at the state level which deserves their own examination. I also explicitly say private weapons because Republicans have a child-like reverence for the power of the state and provision an unlimited number of arms to government agents of every stripe at the drop of a hat and using someone else’s money. Their undeniable love affair with the warfare state has metastasized into an orgiastic passion for all things badged government agent domestically. -BB

“Black men with rifles marched into the state capitol building in Sacramento. In response to that, a bill was passed which became California’s first gun control law and eventually became the model for a national gun control law. So the (Black) Panthers were really the first gun rights movement. And the response to them — which was, by the way, a Republican response, authored by a Republican Congressman and Ronald Regan who was governor at the time…”

– Historian Thaddeus Russell

[ Editor’s Note: The first weapons prohibition law in California would be in 1854: “On March 21, 1854, Assembly Bill 80 was passed, making the sale of firearms and ammunition to “Indians” a misdemeanor.”]

Philosophically, your stance on gun ownership tells me a lot of what your position is on freedom. If you’re a weapons prohibitionist, you tend to be a coercionist and government supremacist.

I dedicate this essay to the fruitless enterprise of voting and hope to show the Republicans or friends who are that the Grand Old Politburo is just as anxious as the Democrats to disarm you. Of course, the post-Second American Revolution Democrats have become a party of weapons prohibition but like all apparatchiks they consistently play philosophical whack-a-mole to plug new holes emerging in the totalitarian dike that separates Helots from their freedom. Two left wings of the same predatory bird.

At least the Democrats are honest enough about their economically illiterate Orwellian love affair with the Leviathan state since the 1930s.

I would suggest that the only difference between the parties is the spelling and nothing else. Both parties are death cults intent on piling on more and more freedom destroying regulations, laws and edicts that smother every ember of freedom that pokes out of the long-dead scorched earth of liberty that the government has firebombed since 1791.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the limited government apologists mewling about the GOP protection of gun rights and I wish to put that fabrication to rest. The Republicans hate atomistic ownership of weapons as much as the Democrats. Just their consistent hero worship of the cop class and constant fellating of the police state should be enough but it is not. I will destroy the perception in detail.

Let’s establish something. You can’t own a thing unless you control it. You don’t own your house even once you pay the mortgage because unless you pay your tribute to local taxing authority, your home will be seized. In America you lease everything from the government and in the case of guns from the Federal government. Unless you managed to be smart and get all your guns off paper and never used a 4473 to buy them, you are on a list. A confiscation list because that is what all registration does. registration just makes the follow-on seizure more bureaucratically efficient. Ask both the holders of gold and German Jews in the 1930s. They were both victims of government seizure via registration.

Federal Firearms Licenses (FFL) are simply extensions of the BATFE; gun stores are non-funded field offices of the ATF much like banks are non-funded informant networks that report to the IRS. Interesting that the 4473 is a violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendment being used to deny the alleged Second Amendment protection. But then again, the Constitution was built to be a predatory doomsday machine to create the largest government the planet has seen in recorded history.

The whole notion of the Second Amendment is a sham and a chimera. I’ve spoken on this at length before and won’t bore you with the details here. A conditional right subject to voiding by the mob and their executors in the government is no right at all in any sense. The endless carping and mewling by gun owners and organizations may give the illusion of controlling the debate but the fat lady has already sung. In the sense that a bird doesn’t know what its wings are for since it spent its life in a cage, my notion that I should have free and unrestricted commerce in all weapons to include fully automatic weapons, suppressors, grenades and anything found on the arms market today is received by the Elmer Fudd gun owners as sheer lunacy. Cash and carry, no registration or licensing. None. But…but…but…what about the children as they run screaming to the nearest coproach to inform on their fellow Helot. Again, registration is simply a necessary precondition to confiscation and seizure.

As usual, police (the pointy end of political action) antipathy and outright fear towards firearms and the Police Chiefs’ Associations stand behind every major component of disarming legislation coming down the pike is per usual for them. One can see this in the thousands of videos available where cops are frightened and alarmed by any taxpayer with a gun.

The atomistic ownership of advanced weapons unregulated and unregistered makes every politicians’ bowels soupy except for a select few one could count on one hand over a span of a hundred years. All statist apparatchiks are deathly afraid of an armed population and always have been. A subject population with firearms that are the equivalent of the armies the government maintains? How absurd.

The Grand Old Politburo was built on war, bloodshed and conflict just like the Democratic Party; the GOP cheering on the conflicts created by the Democrats in WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. As a political organ, its birth in fire during the Second American Revolution makes it assume that peace is always secondary to the bludgeon. If one doesn’t believe that, excepting the America First movement and Taft, the GOP has been a booster of the warfare state since the end of the War to Save Josef Stalin. Both Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt provided plenty of evidence of bloodthirstiness and imperial ambition during their respective reigns of terror in the Offal Office.

While the two models accepted by the government-legal complex in America appear to champion a collective and individualist interpretation, the following survey will prove that the collectivist interpretation has won out. This one endorses the notion that in the end only the government has the right to own and regulate weapons without question. How anything beyond an individual can have rights, I don’t know but that is part of what ails the American Orwellian state.

In a future essay, I will examine the perfidy and evil the government demonstrated until 1934 to close the loop on that particularly ignored part of firearms history. For the sake of keeping the evidence temporal to Republican distaste for civilian gun ownership in the last eighty years, we’ll concentrate our efforts there. Once the Volstead Act was repealed in December of 1933, the government was desperate to find a way to keep their newly minted police powers and legions of G-men employed to enforce Prohibition so the 1934 National Firearms Act was born. A new Federal prohibition began – the continuous and unrelenting assault on the a priori right to keep and bear defensive instruments in the hands of free men

The 1934 NFA federally regulated machine guns, suppressors, short barreled rifles and shotguns, suppressors, and “destructive devices which included grenades and hundreds of items the ATF added at their leisure bureaucratically to a ban list or highly regulated. This was the first notion at the Federal level of using the imprimatur of sporting purposes (not the 1968 Gun Control Act as is popularly imagined) such as this from the text of the wretched bill: “Any firearm with a bore over 0.50 inch except for shotguns or shotgun shells which have been found to be generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes.”

No Republican opposition.

You will also note that America’s preeminence as a firearms innovator, especially in automatic weapons, dropped precipitously after the heavy regulation and ban on garage innovation occurred. The development of the M60 machine gun is Exhibit A.

The Federal Firearms Act of 1938 (FFA) imposed a federal license requirement on gun manufacturers, importers, and persons in the business of selling firearms. This created the infamous FFL controls on commerce.

No Republican opposition.

One should carefully read the nonsense passed by the Supremes in 1939 in US v. Miller in which sawed off shotguns became a regulated item. Here we see the tortured logic on display of how the government can start to enforce restrictions on military-type weapons in spite of the previous hundreds years jurisprudence talking about the military applicability of weapons choices in the individualist interpretation of the Second Amendment. Mind you, in contretemps to their own tortured conclusions in the rendering of the verdict. Neither the defendants nor their legal counsel appeared at the Supreme Court for the case. A lack of financial support and procedural irregularities prevented counsel from traveling. It’s worth noting that the Supremes clearly stated that military weapons were protected but the length of the weapon seemed to be the operative cause for the decision. A mere generation before shotguns had been employed in WWI by US forces.

No Republican opposition.

Fast-forward to 1967 and we have Republican Governor Ronald Reagan signing the Mulford Act, which repealed a law allowing open carrying loaded firearms in public. He did this in response to the Black Panthers carrying loaded weapons to the steps of the Big House in Sacramento. Tease out the facts and a law was passed to confirm the “bearing” of weapons but repealed? Before that, believe it or not, California had the now popular notion of Constitutional Carry for long arms and side arms. What a tangled web they weave.

No Republican opposition.

This was just before the infamous passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968 which severely curtailed gun rights across the board. The now extinct JPFO made a brilliant case for Senator Dodd; he was Vice-Chairman of the Review Board and later Executive Trial Counsel at the Nuremberg trials lifting the text almost entirely from the Nazi gun control laws in 1938. This would also create the noxious BATFE in 1968. And please keep in mind that a Democratic President passed this and twice as many Republicans as Democrats voted in favor of passage. You read that right. It was two Democrats, Colmer and Cellar who fought Johnson’s attempt to register all weapons in the United States.

No Republican opposition.

In 1972, Republican President Richard Nixon floats a proposal to ban handguns in America. To quote the scoundrel himself: “I don’t know why any individual should have a right to have a revolver in his house,” Nixon said in a taped conversation with aides. “The kids usually kill themselves with it and so forth.” He asked why “can’t we go after handguns, period?” Nixon went on: “I know the rifle association will be against it, the gun makers will be against it.” But “people should not have handguns.”

The Firearm Owners Protection Act is passed in 1986 which makes illegal all machine guns manufactured after that date and signed by the same man who signed the Mulford Act in 1967. Despite a prohibition on a national registry the act nonetheless enabled the ATF to codify turning in all out of business 4473 transactions and more intensely ramp up inspection that recorded all these “bound book” transactions. In effect, creating a de facto national gun registry in the Federal books codified by law.

No Republican opposition.

“You do know that I am a member of the NRA and my position on the right to bear arms is well known,” Reagan said, speaking out in support of the 1994 Brady bill to create new background checks and a waiting period for gun buyers. “But I want you to know something else, and I am going to say it in clear, unmistakable language: I support the Brady Bill and I urge Congress to enact it without further delay.”

In 1989, Bushevik I declared a ban on the import of cosmetically offensive “assault weapons”. This would be the prototype for the “Assault Weapons Ban“ in 1993.

No Republican opposition.

The idiotic Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 would be signed by Bushevik I in November 1990. Co-sponsored by Republican Senator Strom Thurmond, no less.

Then in 1993, the US passes the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB). So far, we haven’t even discussed the silliness of infringement on these alleged Second Amendment protections. I am a Constitutional skeptic of the highest order but my friends who still worship the parchment can provide no explanation for how often the 2A is violated yet they happily think the whole wretched system works just fine. What was interesting in this vote on the AWB is that the majority of Republicans opposed it but the Democrats fielded 64 nay votes versus the GOP nay tally of 131 because 46 Republicans voted for the ban when the Democrats owned the Offal Office.

Once Bushevik II is in office, he boldly claims that if the AWB comes across his desk for renewal, he will sign it because Americans shouldn’t own those types of weapons. He goes on to sign the NICS Improvement Act of 2007 which another Orwellian in the Federal pre-crime quiver for weapons ownership. Just another Big Brother improvement to data-basing potential malefactors.

It’s an interesting thought experiment to replace all these laws with the word book where gun is and one sees that the war of ideas is far more dangerous to political control than anything else. The powers that be just haven’t gotten around to gutting free speech with the merriment they have enjoined destroying personal armament.

Nor is there a single well-financed organization in America whose only task is to raze every Federal gun law to the ground and salt the earth. Until the Republican love affair with authority and wood shampoos is eradicated, no accord will be reached as the powerful armed government employee lobby continues to push for wholesale disarmament of all non-agents. Like drunk-driving, the entire predicate of the massive hoplophobic complex in political law enforcement is the concept of pre-crime.

And then of course we have the 2008 DC v. Hellercase in which the Republican appointed Supremes tell us about “dangerous and unusual” weapons that fly in the face of earlier findings on the germane necessity of military weapons to the 2A. Like Roberts, Scalia must think that pleasing the collectivist intelligentsia with his government supremacist nonsense is more important than mere freedom.

“Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. [United States v.] Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.”

I am amused that he hearkens to US v. Miller which on its face supports my contention to carry weapons in present use by the military. I repeat, the Second Amendment is worth as much as the Constitution in defending individual liberty and freedom: worthless.

I so wish one vote had gone the other way in DC v. Heller so we could get on to resolving this firearms ownership issue once and for all. Even though it would be the hard way.

I am amused that the Republican victories in November 2014 made folks think that freedom would ring. Not a chance.

Have you heard any potential or employed functionary of the government propose to destroy every last vestige of Federal involvement over private arms in America? Didn’t think so.

Two parties, same agenda; destroy all freedom where they find it. This brief expose simply provides evidence to the notion.

Resist.

“Guns are an abomination,” Nixon replied. According to Safire, Nixon went on to confess that, “Free from fear of gun owners’ retaliation at the polls, he favored making handguns illegal and requiring licenses for hunting rifles.”

Andrew

Early drafts of the 1934 Gun Control Act included handguns…the “Any Other Weapon” of a “firearm” being under 26″ Overall Length would have required them to be registered and taxed just like machine guns…but somebody figured that would have been too much, too fast.

Plus, due to the speed of Newspapers back then, by the time most people figured out their Thompson, Colt Monitor, shotgun shorter than the arbitrary length, whatever, were suddenly “untaxed and therefore illegal” it was too late to “register them” even if said person had wanted to.

I personally like Ithaca’s Auto and Burglar 20 gauge double barrel, that looked mighty handy as a nightstand or vehicle gun, and I assume it wasn’t a breaker of the bank price wise when new.

Also, ponder all of Hiram Maxim’s “Silencers”…very few are on the Class 2 Market as very few people were willing to pay the tax which was undoubtedly many times the price of the original piece of metal, as was most of the guns “shorter than legal length”. Who was going to pay $200 to register a $10 shotgun that got turned, for one reason or another, into something handier for the house than the field?

Bill

Splendid observations on the contemporary madness that was the 1934 NFA, the beginning of codifying hoplophobia at the Federal level. With as evil and violent as the Feds are, I don’t blame them for the slow drip disarmament program they have instituted since then.

Bill

The pose by GOA has been very profitable for them. If the gun rights orgs were serious, they would conduct a scorched earth legal march through every Federal gun law but that is not their brief.

What a great essay that is you linked to (as usual).

In AZ where I have a home, the “Constitutional Carry” bill caused alot of soupy bowels among the coproaches and the governor made sure you are forced to surrender whatever weapon you have to them on their whim when commanded to do so during any stop. The 2A is just as fraudulent as the Constitution as a vessel for freedom.

leonard embody

I sued Tennessee park rangers after they illegally detained me for over two hours after I openly carried a legal pistol on a sling. Guess who wrote amicus briefs against my case? Calguns, AlanGura, and the Brady group. Gura, in the brief to the federal court of appeals, called my semi-auto pistol “dangerous and unusual.” LOL The NRA, Calguns, and attorneys for those groups are almost as anti-gun as the Brady group. The problem with the NRA, SAF, and Calguns is that they are not truthful about their anti-gun tendencies.

SemperFi, 0321

In Jan 1980 I went in to the Boise City Police Dept to have the Chief of Police sign off on my Class 3 permit, the secretary took my papers in, came right back out and informed me “machine-guns are illegal in Idaho, therefore he won’t sign it for you”.

The next day, I went in the door adjacent to the Chief of Police (8′ away), to the Ada County Sheriff and he signed me off and wished me luck after I told him of yesterdays escapade.

MtTopPatriot

That is one of the greatest things you have written. And you have written some serious superlative essays.

Another great thing is how you defined the truth here. To read it is to be instilled with a sense of things which empowers one with knowledge and desire and will to find viable answers and alternatives to this retched”state” of affairs.

MtTopPatriot

I read these words of truth here, and I marvel at the great alternatives to this stairway of abyss these monumentally selfish idiots are taking everyone with them if they can only disarm us.

They have to be delusional to think they are untouchable and unstoppable. They know not the forces of God and free will of men of liberty they meddle with.

I believe they mistake subservience for tolerance which grows thinner by the hour for their smug cunning sense of their unassailable illegitimacy.

Nothing could be further from the truth of us who are to always for eternity to be freemen. No matter the obstacles or trials or tribulations.

They do not understand what it is to be freemen, to have liberty, to feel it balls to bones. It is a gift from the great creator like no other, it is a concept, a reality, an act of the Devine, a way of being so foreign, so alien, it is really no wonder in their ignorance why they believe they are elite, special, above an accounting for the trespasses against those they deem unsuitable for any consideration but how they may be used and abused for profit and gain.

Nothing, and I say nothing on God’s green Earth could be further from the truth of us, and them.

They despise and fear us freemen? I say well good! They should. Indeed, and yet, they don’t fear us enough. I believe they will come soon, like nothing they ever imagined in their demented minds. And rightfully so.

Comeuppance for what they are doing to us is a dish best served without mercy or quarter. None is warranted, for they have gone too far. They have been busy conjuring up twisted devices of tyranny to consume our very existence, constructs of sociopathic minds so unwholesome it becomes existentially unacceptable.

Time is quickly gathering where nothing will deny the just resistance to this tyranny. And when it begins it will be a cascade of payback. A tidal wave of payback.
It only remains to be seen if we have in ourselves to salvage what was lost when that piece of desiccated parchment was grifted upon our sovereign souls and used to enslave our unknowing good nature.

So you go Bill, give the sonofabitches hell and then some. They should be warned, it is only right the bastards should be aware we are onto their malice and forethought. If for no other reason than the surprise when they discover they ain’t anything special or untouchable, and made a grave mistake when they messed with what’s best in us.

Anonymous

In the last hundred years technological innovation increased man’s travel speed from horseback to moon rockets. In the same hundred years, the same innovation improved man’s individual defense weapon from a revolver, to a revolver that won’t go off if you drop it. See how effective gun control has been?

The point of gun control is to make it militarily practical to collect taxes and enforce government policy. The only way to obtain liberty is to militarily defend against theft by the bulk of humans who envy you. I bet if you were to work that problem to write a movie screenplay, you could invent a solution in a week.

Anonymous

Here are some movie plot ideas: what if the effort put into manufacturing meth was put into manufacturing Claymore mines? What about small, suppressed bullets carrying jellyfish sting venom in the tip? One shot that breaks the skin disables anyone but doesn’t kill them? For the trespassing neighborhood kids and solicitors, pop-up sprinkers in the yard spraying a mixture of OC, skunk scent and permanent ink? Best idea of all: a free state project type web page signup where one million persons could anonymously coordinate to stop paying taxes all on one day, and refuse to accept consequences. It’d make a great movie, you should write it.